BASEBALL

BASEBALL; The Owners Are Stalled On Way to Realignment

By MURRAY CHASS

Published: September 17, 1997

ATLANTA, Sept. 16—
The grand scheme for realignment of baseball's major leagues, which owners had at one time hoped to implement at meetings here this week, has stalled so badly that it may be moving in reverse.

The realignment committee that met for about four hours tonight faced the daunting task of trying to formulate a plan that not only would gain the necessary majority votes in each league, but also would deter moving clubs from exercising vetoes that were granted them when the realignment dream was initiated last January.

It was likely, even before the owners convened, that no vote would be taken on any plan this week. It was also likely that Bud Selig, the acting commissioner and driving force behind the realignment movement, was counting on getting all of the owners in the same room and hoping that a different dynamic would take over, leading them in the direction he and his fellow realignment strategists wanted them to go.

One of those brainstorming strategists is Bill Giles, chairman of the Philadelphia Phillies, and comments he made tonight offered an insight into the likelihood that the realignment engine, short of the top of the hill, has started rolling back down the incline.

The Phillies had been willing to move to the American League in the interest of an improved schedule and improved league structures through geography. But just before entering the meeting, Giles said, ''I would say right now we are not in favor of leaving the National League unless the big radical plan happens, and I don't see how that's going to happen.''

The radical plan, the original scheme devised by the strategists, would have had 15 teams change leagues. But seven National League teams, four of which would move under that plan, opposed the idea. The Mets, one of the four, and the Chicago Cubs were especially vehement in their reluctance to be in the same league with the other teams from their cities.

The opposition effectively killed the plan, leaving the planners scrambling to find some number that would work, perhaps seven or nine.

Some owners who were not in the committee meeting tonight said that the latest working plan they knew of would have seven teams changing leagues: Oakland, Seattle, Anaheim and Milwaukee or Kansas City to the National League; Philadelphia, Montreal and Florida to the American League.

''We're not willing to move unless a lot of people are willing to move,'' Giles said. ''We were in favor of the original, very radical plan because to be able to play the Yankees, the Mets, the Red Sox and Baltimore and so forth, we thought, was good enough to do away with the problem of moving leagues. But just to be one of two or three clubs to move, we're not going to do it.''

Giles did not say how he would feel about a seven-team switch.

The owners, of course, could devise a plan in which the Phillies did not move, but the problem that confronted them was the reluctance of a lot of teams to move to a new league, or to have teams in their areas join them in their current league.

The San Francisco Giants, for example, do not want their neighbors, the Oakland Athletics, in their league. Under every plan yet concocted, all eight western teams -- five from the National League, three from the American -- would be in the National. The Giants have even threatened to sue if the Athletics are moved to the N.L.

The Athletics' lease at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum expires after next season. After that, the team goes year by year through 2006. Under terms of the lease, before the Athletics were moved out of the market area, the club would have to be offered for sale to a buyer who would keep it there.

People in Sacramento and San Jose, where the Giants have a minor league team, have begun exploring the possibility of bringing a team to their cities. Sacramento, whose officials have begun talking about building a baseball park, recently sent a delegation to Colorado to study Coors Field. Las Vegas, Nev., is another possible future home of the Athletics.

Obviously, a new stadium would take a couple of years to build, but the Giants might relent in their stance if they knew the Athletics would be moving.

One strong proponent said he was optimistic that the owners could accomplish realignment if they shed the emotion that engulfs the issue and deal only with the logic.

''If people are prepared to embrace a larger vision when they're given the opportunity to do that, it could happen here,'' Tom Schieffer, president of the Texas Rangers, said.

But the Rangers are part of one example of why realignment will be difficult to achieve. They and the Houston Astros would like to be in the same division, and many of the proposed plans would move the Astros to the A.L. The Astros' owner, Drayton McLane Jr., said he would not change leagues.

The Rangers, Schieffer added, would be willing to move to the N.L. Asked what the worst development could be, he said, ''The worst thing that can happen would be reverting to the status quo. The 15-15 division of the teams is inviting catastrophe.''

If the owners cannot agree on a plan and get the union to agree with them, they will play next season with 15 teams in each league and interleague games daily.